Laminate yes, peeling thermofoil no. Flat laminate takes a bonding primer and finishes inside the usual $2,000 to $6,500 we quote for a sprayed kitchen. Once thermofoil film has lifted, paint follows the film off, and replacement fronts run $180 to $330 per door fitted.
Both names get used for the same doors in the same kitchen, so Custom Cabinets Lynn checks which one you have before quoting you either route. Take one of your doors off and look at the back edge. Laminate is a rigid sheet bonded to a flat substrate, and the seam runs along the edge as a hard line. Thermofoil is a soft vinyl film heat-pressed over a shaped fiberboard core, so it wraps continuously around the profile with no seam at all.
That wrap is what fails. Heat from your range, your dishwasher vent or a wall oven softens the adhesive under it, so the film releases at the edge nearest the source. It usually shows first on the door immediately left or right of the range, and by the time you notice it there is nothing left to bond to.
Where your film is still tight, paint holds. We degrease, scuff the sheen off, put down a bonding primer rated for slick surfaces, and spray a urethane or waterborne alkyd enamel. Sherwin-Williams Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel recoats in 4 hours against the 16 that a waterborne alkyd needs, which on a job of loose doors is a day of difference rather than an hour.
Your doors are plastic, but the face frames and box edges around them are usually painted wood. In a kitchen from before 1978 that puts the job under 454 CMR 22.00 once we disturb 6 square feet, which is why we quote containment on a laminate kitchen in a 1946 house and not on the same doors in a 1995 one.
Where it has lifted, you would be paying to coat a surface that is already coming away, so we tell you to replace the fronts instead. You can change every door and drawer front and keep every box, at $2,200 to $6,600 across a whole kitchen.
Both routes are in the tables on our cabinet cost guide, and painting without sanding covers the prep in more detail.
Related questions
How do I tell laminate from thermofoil on my own doors?
Look at a corner of your door edge. You will see a seam on laminate, where a flat sheet meets the substrate. Thermofoil has no seam because one film wraps the whole profile, and yours is probably a white or off-white slab with soft rounded detail.
Can a peeled thermofoil door be re-glued?
Not durably. Once the film has released it has shrunk, so it will not lie back flat, and the heat that lifted it is still there. We replace that one door for $180 to $330 fitted, which is worth doing before its neighbors go the same way.
Does painting laminate hold up around a sink?
It does where the board underneath yours is dry. What fails at a sink is the board, not the coating, so we replace a base whose deck has swollen at $400 to $1,400 before anything gets sprayed over it.